My no-bake cheesecake. By Matt Preston

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In this month's issue

Taste.com.au - March 2013
Eat in, eat out, eat well. Look for the taste liftout on Tuesdays in the Herald Sun, Courier Mail and Daily Telegraph, on Wednesdays in the Adelaide Advertiser, and in Perth’s Sunday Times.

Forget fancy pants desserts – all you need to be happy in life is a condensed, childlike passion for no-bake cheesecake. Matt Preston reports.

Over the past couple of years hanging out together on this page I think we have come to an understanding about a few things.

We agree good food doesn't need to be fancy food and that the people around the table are more important than the food on it.

You've also probably realised a few things about me: I'm lazy and would rather make good food quickly and easily rather than with maximum fuss; I like big, bold flavours (even if that undermines claims my ego would like to make about being sophisticated); and I have a childlike excitement when it comes to tasty tucker.

I seriously think the creation of some tasty new dish does more for our overall happiness than the discovery of a new star – unless the star has got a silly name that raises a smile, like "Scheat" or "Menkant".

All of the above is why this week's column is so dear to my heart: I love cheesecake.

I especially like bad, unfashionable, flavours-of-the-lolly-shop cheesecake, as opposed to fly-to-New York-and-have-someone-stick-spakfilla-to-the-roof-of-your-mouth cheesecake.

I'd like to claim that by making no-bake cheesecakes I'm tackling the challenge of climate change head on, and by using condensed milk I am supporting those brave farmers who still choose to raise condensed cows.

Also, neither of these recipes uses those nasty claggy ingredients some cheesecakes favour, like cornflour or ricotta.

If I were pompous, I'd say that I was taking cheesecake back to its roots. Ancient Rome's Cato the Elder wrote about beating sheep's milk with honey in the first recorded recipe for cheesecake.

These two recipes are like my cheesecake battlestandard that should flutter above my culinary lines.

Raspberry splice cheesecake

This cheesecake pays homage to one of my favourite ice creams as well as the current childish obsession with extreme sourness in sweets such as sour worms.

I took the idea of placing a layer of raspberry jam on the biscuit base from one of Henry VIII's favourite little cakes called Maid of Honour tarts.

Knowing how the king with six wives was devastatingly attracted to lovely things I think he'd fall for this cheesecake. With its virginal and ermine-smooth creamy filling topped with glinting, glistening rubble of ruby jelly cubes it looks more spectacular than any other cheesecake you've ever seen.

Lime pie

This take on a Florida key lime pie is so ridiculously easy, it should be known as a "cheatscake".

The topping is inspired by Christina Tosi's no-crust, spoonable new-age cheesecake from New York uber-hot Momofuku Milk Bar – without the cornstarch and the cooking. I didn't dye the filling green with food colouring but you can if you want to reference the key lime pie's 1970s' heyday.

If you want to seem smart at dinner – even though you are serving about the world's most simple dessert—note that the pie originated with Florida's sponge fishermen in the mid- 1800s. It was a scurvy-fighting onboard favourite whose no-cook nature and storage-friendly nature of tinned milk and fresh limes was perfect for a life at sea.